August 22nd, 2011 - Greetings all! Welcome back to another edition of the news! We hope you're keeping cool as we pass through the last few weeks of summer. Hot topics this edition include mobile app and site updates as well as new contest info. Also, a special thank you for your patience as we resolve issues with the Rich Text editor on our Update Journal and entry editing pages.We kick things off with a rundown of recent feature additions and updates.

Important things to know

Features and Changes

Spam protection is now available for your Inbox in addition to post comments! If you have enabled the Spam Protection setting, messages sent to your Inbox which are suspected as being spam will be automatically moved to a Suspicious Messages folder. Once in the Suspicious Messages folder, your messages can be reviewed and moved back to your Inbox at your discretion.

The Filter and Calendar items on the navigation strip no longer pop up when you mouse over them; you need to click these items to access their respective dialogs.

We've updated the Rich Text Editor on our Update Journal and entry editing pages. The interface update includes new icons for existing features and there is now a button for the LJ-Like feature.

Old icons:

New icons:

For more information on the changes in this release, please visit lj_releases.

iPad/iPhone app version updates

We've recently updated our iPad/iPhone app to version 1.1.1. Updated features in the new version include:

The ability to read any journal from the app

Journal viewing history

YouTube and Vimeo video support

Addition of 'lj-like' tag to entries via toolbar

Links to LiveJournal entries and comments now open within the LiveJournal app interface

Improved support for Hebrew, Arabic, and Japanese languages

Various application bugs fixed

Journal style contest winners update

The wait for the winning journal theme styles from our last contest is almost over. The Spring Daze theme (pictured below on the far right) is currently available on the journal style selection page. The other two themes will be available in our next release.

Halloween header design contest

The next header design contest theme is Halloween. The winning header will appear on LiveJournal throughout the second half of October. We'll be accepting submissions for the Halloween header design contest from Monday, August 22nd, through Monday, September 19th over at remixed. Five finalists will be selected by LiveJournal staff members for your review. The winning submission and the finalists will receive 2500 and 1000 tokens respectively. We look forward to seeing your original works! Good luck, artists!

Let the sun shine in!

If you have a Paid or Permanent account, you can send five free Sunflowers now until Friday, August 26th, at 4pm, PDT! You'll see both the free and the $0.99 gifts displayed until you've sent them to your friends. If you're not receiving vgifts (from friends and/or Frank), you may have disabled them. To enable vgifts, visit Edit profile (under Profile), scroll down to the bottom of the page, and check your settings. Make sure the box beside 'Disable sponsored only' is NOT checked! Enjoy!

For news about LJ_Scribe and LJ_Photophile, we'll see you under the cut!

Photo of the week

FYI: We pick entries for the poll based on a combination of comments, +1 ratings, and staff input. The winner receives 500 LJ tokens. We thank you for sharing your talent with the global LiveJournal community.

Welcome back, dear scribes!

Congratulations to caliecat, joanneswift, and theiform, who won prompt #25 of our lj_scribe writing contest! In addition to the joy of sharing your well-turned phrases, the top three finalists will each win 1,000 LJ Tokens. The remaining finalists will receive 500 LJ Tokens.

Welcome to the new LiveJournal

Some changes have been made to LiveJournal, and we hope you enjoy them! As we continue to improve the site on a daily basis to make your experience here better and faster, we would greatly appreciate your feedback about these changes. Please let us know what we can do for you!